9.  The applicants are all Turkish nationals. They were living in Tepsili village at the time of the alleged events giving rise to the present application. In a letter dated 6 July 2001 the applicants’ lawyers informed the Court that one of the applicants, namely Ali Artun, had died on 9 August 2000 and that his heirs Selvi Artun, Kemal Artun, Kenan Artun, Ercan Artun, Himet Artun wished to pursue the application. Hıdır Sevim also died on 24 January 2005 and his heirs named Ali Sevim to pursue the application on their behalf. The facts of the case are in dispute between the parties and may be summarised as follows.
10.  Until October 1994 the applicants all lived in Tepsili, a village of Ovacık district in Tunceli province, in the then state-of-emergency region of Turkey. In 1994, terrorist activity was a major concern in this area. Since the 1980s a violent conflict had been going on in the region between the security forces and sections of the Kurdish population in favour of Kurdish autonomy, in particular members of the PKK (Workers’ Party of Kurdistan). The inhabitants of the applicants’ village were suspected of “aiding and abetting terrorists”; and accordingly they were strictly and frequently controlled by the gendarmes stationed near the village.
11.  On 3 October 1994 security forces surrounded Tepsili and assembled the inhabitants in the village square. Using curse words, they told the villagers that the village would be evacuated at once with no possibility of return. The applicants took what they were able to carry with them and left the village. Immediately after the evacuation, the soldiers set the houses and the crops on fire.
12.  Ali Artun, Mazlum Altun, Zeynel Güloğlu and Hıdır Sevim moved temporarily into a prefabricated State disaster housing complex close to Ovacık, while Sinan Güloğlu moved to Çakmaklı village.
13.  Following the incident, the applicants filed individual petitions with the Ovacık Public Prosecutor’s office complaining about the burning down of their village by gendarmes. The applicants noted their temporary addresses as the reply address for their petitions.
14.  As the case concerned an investigation into alleged acts of the security forces, the Ovacık Public Prosecutor issued a decision of non‑jurisdiction and referred the petitions to the office of the District Governor in Ovacık in accordance with the Law on the Prosecution of Civil Servants (Memurin Muhakematı Kanunu).
15.  The District Governor sent a letter to the Ovacık Gendarmerie Headquarters and requested information about the applicants’ allegations.
16.  In a letter of 1 November 1994 the Gendarmerie Commander informed the District Governor that the security forces had not burned any house during their operations in the area. Accordingly, on 9 December 1994 the Ovacık Administrative Council issued a decision to discontinue the criminal proceedings against the gendarmes.
17.  On 25 October 1995 the Ovacık District Governor sent a letter to the applicants. Relying on the Ovacık Gendarmerie Commander’s letter of 1 November 1994, he explained that he was unconvinced by their allegations. He further explained that pursuant to the established case-law of the Supreme Administrative Court (Danıştay), no inquiry was possible unless the identity of the accused civil servant were specified. He therefore stated that the authorities would not initiate an investigation into the alleged events.
18.  On 15 February 1996 the District Governor’s above letter was served upon one of the applicants Ali Artun, who is the former mayor (muhtar) of the evacuated Tepsili village. The cover letter stated that the authorities were unable to find out the new addresses of the applicants and that therefore Ali Artun, as the mayor of the village, had been required to forward it to the other petitioners. The applicants learned about the District Governor’s letter through their relatives and acquaintances at a much later stage.
19.  In 1994 members of the PKK started a propaganda campaign for the organisation in the villages of Ovacık district. They kidnapped young men from these villages and forced them to join the organisation. The PKK militants issued threats against the villagers and harassed them. The inhabitants of the villages left their homes as a result of the pressure exerted by the PKK.
20.  The investigation carried out by the authorities revealed that the applicants’ houses had not been burned by the security forces but by terrorists wearing military uniforms. In their statements to the investigating authorities, the applicants failed to indicate the identity of the perpetrators of the alleged crime.
21.  The parties submitted various documents with a view to substantiating their claims. These documents, in so far as they are relevant, can be summarised as follows.
22.  The applicants, Sinan Güloğlu, Süleyman Ersiz, Mazlum Artun, Zeynel Güloğlu and Ercan Artun submitted a protocol dated 29 June 2001 in which they claimed that Zeynel Güloğlu had suffered financial damages because of the destruction of his beehives and 1,000 kilograms of honey in Tepsili village.
(b)  Annual Reports of the Human Rights Foundation (“the TIHV”)
23.  The Human Rights Foundation is a non-governmental organisation with its head office in Ankara, Turkey. Its 1993 Report stated that, from 1990 to 1993, more than 913 villages and hamlets had been evacuated. The 1993 Report maintained that village evacuations had accelerated in 1993, mostly targeting the villages whose inhabitants refused to serve as village guards.
24.  The 1994 Report of the TIHV argued that the Government’s policy was to claim that the evacuations and eventual destructions were caused by PKK terror, poverty and the forces of nature. According to the same report, some 50 to 60 villages were burned down in each of the provinces subject to the emergency rule.
25.  The 1995 Report maintained that more than 400 villages had been evacuated in 1995. According to the 1996 Report, the State-of-Emergency Regional Governor once mentioned that a total of 918 villages and 1,767 hamlets had been evacuated for various reasons, although never admitting that evacuations had been carried out by security forces.
26.  The 1997 and 1998 Reports described the Government’s policy of evacuating villages as a systematic “internal security operation” applied throughout the 1990s.
(c)  Excerpts from “Burned-down / Evacuated Villages and Migration”, a book published by the Human Rights Association
27. The excerpts gave a comprehensive list of burned-down and/or evacuated villages from February 1990 to January 1999. The list did not make any reference to Tepsili as having been evacuated and destroyed.
28.  The excerpts contained several articles reproduced from a daily newspaper Ülkede Gündem, relating to the evacuation of villages and its detrimental effects on the displaced persons. The articles stressed that numerous villagers had filed petitions with the State authorities, complaining that their villages had been burned down by security forces.
29.  The articles also emphasized that the Government’s public declarations, which appeared to allow displaced villagers to return to their villages, were unreliable. Whenever villagers had attempted to do so, they were physically denied access to their villages.
(d)  The report of 14 January 1998 of the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s Commission of Inquiry on the measures to be taken in order to address the problems of the persons displaced following the evacuation of settlement units in east and south-east Anatolia
30.  This report was prepared by a Commission of Inquiry composed of ten members of parliament. According to the report, in 1993 and 1994 the inhabitants of 905 villages and 2,923 hamlets were evicted and forced to move to other regions of the country (p.13).
31.  The report included a statement by Mr Doğan Hatipoğlu, a former governor of Diyarbakır. Mr Hatipoğlu explained that, during his office, occasional village evacuations by military authorities were brought to his attention. He stated that – although very rarely – he had received complaints about village burnings. According to Mr Hatipoğlu, it was inconceivable to assert that all the villages were vacated due to PKK coercion. He alleged that the Government had failed to take the necessary measures for a healthy resettlement of displaced persons (p.13).
32.  The report also referred to the “Human Rights Report – Turkey”, prepared and submitted to the Commission of Inquiry in 1995 by Mr Yavuz Önen, the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation. This latter report dedicated a chapter to immigrants and evacuated villages. It argued that, in 1995, the practice of evacuation of villages and hamlets was widespread. Many houses in villages were either destroyed or made uninhabitable. People were forced to emigrate from the region and pressure was exerted on the inhabitants until they left their villages. In early 1995 there was practically no village or hamlet inhabited except those whose inhabitants agreed to become village guards (p.19).
33.  The report of the Commission of Inquiry also referred to the speech delivered at the Turkish Grand National Assembly by Mr Salih Yıldırım, a deputy from Şırnak, on 3 June 1997 on the question of evacuated villages. Mr Yıldırım stated, inter alia, that the villages were evacuated either by the PKK, in order to intimidate those who opposed it, by the authorities since they were unable to protect the villages, or because the inhabitants of those villages refused to become village guards or were suspected of having aided the PKK (p. 20).
34.  In conclusion, it was recommended in the report that the inhabitants of the settlement units should be re-housed in the provinces, districts or central villages – rather than hamlets – close to the area where they used to live and that necessary economic measures should be taken with a view to providing employment to the inhabitants of the region, priority being given to the immigrants.
35.  This report was prepared by Şahin Özyurt who is an investigator for human rights abuses. It aims at establishing the property owned by each of the applicants. It appears that Ali Artun owned land measuring 16,234 square metres from which he could derive 128,000,000 Turkish liras’ (TRL) annual income at the relevant time. Total value of his property was TRL 470,000,000. Mr Artun was not subscribed to TEDAŞ, meaning that he did not have electricity at home. According to the official records, he did not have any commercial activity given that he did not pay any tax before 1994.
36.  Mazlum Artun owned 17,406 square metres of land according to the land registry records. It was estimated that he could derive TRL 224,000,000 annual income at the relevant time. The value of his property was estimated around TRL 826,000,000. It further appeared that he owned a “green card” given to very poor people for medical care and that he received TRL 3,000,000 from the Ovacık District Governor’s office for his treatment.
37.  Hıdır Sevim owned a total of 26,520 square metres of land according to the land registry records. It was estimated that he could derive TRL 224,000,000’s annual income at the relevant time. The value of his property was estimated around TRL 400,000,000. It further appeared that he did not have any “private forest” as alleged, but was only allowed to do timber felling. Such privilege was only given to poor people who do not have sufficient income.
38.  Sinan Güloğlu lived in Çakmaklı village of Ovacık. He owned 625 square metres of land according to the land registry records. He did not live in Tepsili but only had beehives there. He received a flock of sheep and TRL 176,000,000 in aid from the Ovacık District Governor’s office. Since 13 May 1999 he also had a green card.
39.  Zeynel Güloğlu also lived in Çakmaklı village of Ovacık. He owned a total of 992 square metres of land according to the land registry records. He was living in the house of Musa Arat as a tenant and had beehives in Tepsili. He received TRL 75,000,000 in aid from the Ovacık District Governor’s office. Since 15 January 2004 May 1999 he had a green card.
(b)  Seyit Ali Aktaş’s statements dated 10 March 2004, taken by two gendarme officers
40.  The witness is a resident of Tepsili village. His statements were taken in order to determine the situation of Ali Artun and Hıdır Sevim who had lodged an application with the Court. The witness stated that the village had been evacuated on account of terrorist activities and lack of security in the region. The villagers all moved to other villages or provinces and at the relevant time nobody lived in Tepsili. The houses in the village had fallen into ruin because of natural forces. There was no electricity, school or telephone in the village. Ali Artun left the village and moved to Istanbul where he died in 2000. Hıdır Sevim moved to Genze district of Izmit province where he lives with his family.
(c)  Joint statements by Hıdır Güloğlu and Seyit Ali Aktaş, taken on 10 March 2004 by two gendarme officers
41.  The witnesses Hıdır Güloğlu and Seyit Ali Aktaş are inhabitants of Çakmaklı and Tepsili villages, respectively. They stated that the applicant Sinan Güloğlu did not reside but had beehives in Tepsili. Nor did he have any land in Tepsili. They further claimed that Sinan Güloğlu currently lived in Çakmaklı, which village had an open road, water, electricity and telephone services.
42.  As regards the applicant Zeynel Güloğlu, the witnesses noted that he lived in the house of Musa Arat as a tenant in Tepsili but that he did not own any land in the village. He earned his living by stockbreeding. The witnesses also stated that Zeynel Güloğlu currently lived in Kandolar neighbourhood of Ovacık district.